Kesha Opens Morton Amphitheater With 10,000-Fan Riverside Debut

Kesha opened Morton Amphitheater in Riverside on Wednesday, June 3, turning the venue’s first concert into a live test of its 16,000-person capacity. More than 10,000 fans showed up for the Freedom Tour stop, giving the Live Nation-backed amphitheater a strong launch night.

Riverside Debut

The show marked Kesha’s first Kansas City appearance in nine years and put her at the front of a new venue that still has more than 35 acts lined up for its inaugural year. That made the opening less like a routine tour stop and more like the first public measure of whether Morton Amphitheater can fill seats at scale from the start.

Kesha said the Freedom Tour comes two years after she launched Kesha Records and three years after a near decade-long legal battle with Dr. Luke ended. She also told the crowd, “I’m grateful that you’re here with me tonight, and I really need for you to know that I love you,” before adding, “You truly are the love of my life.”

Setlist Choices

She played for over 90 minutes, opening with “TiK ToK” and later slowing down “Blow” while playing electric guitar. “Blow” reached as high as No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100, and she changed the opening line of “TiK ToK” to “Wake up in the morning like, 'F--- P. Diddy'.”

The set also carried more weight because Kesha had not performed some fan favorites in over 13 years before her 2026 run of tours. For a 39-year-old artist who said the fight over her contracts with RCA Records and Kemosabe Records shaped part of that period, the Riverside crowd got a set built as much on release as nostalgia.

Ray Nibro Jr. Arrives Early

Ray Nibro Jr. was among the fans who arrived early for the concert, and he described the pull of Kesha’s catalog plainly: “I always just loved her music, and it resonated with me a lot, especially during my high school times,” he said. “She was an artist I’d always go listen to.”

That mix of a 10,000-plus turnout, a first-night venue launch, and a set built around songs that had sat dormant for more than 13 years gives Morton Amphitheater an opening-night benchmark it can actually use. Kesha did more than cut a ribbon with a microphone; she supplied the first real crowd count for a building that now has to prove it can keep pulling them in.